"Ruth is my soul mate and best friend, and I cannot imagine living a single day without her by my side," Graham said. "I am more in love with her today than when we first met over 65 years ago as students at Wheaton College."

My grandparents were married 67 years and I wear my grandmother's 1921 engagement ring as I write this. She was 16 and grandpa was 18 when they become engaged.

It is hard to imagine how it must feel to lose the one person on the planet who knows all your life in its details, to whom you have instinctively turned in all situations, to whom you have been deeply bonded for so many years.

Fr. Michael Sweeney has often commented about the death of his own father "he was the only person who still saw my mother as a young girl."

People like that: spouses, siblings, parents, close friends whose love stretches over the years and decades, hold such a precious and irreplaceable place in our lives. Only God knows us better.